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ogy that became so marked during apartheid had, moreover, already begun to widen in the 1920s, with Afrikaners allying themselves much more closely with older German ideas of cultural diffusion than with nascent British functionalism.74 This was in keeping with Afrikaner ideology and its Calvinist focus on the unique place of each volk in the world as preordained by God, which included a special emphasis on the particular role of the Afrikaners themselves as His chosen people.75 Afrikaner anthropology thus came to focus on the concept of volk—the “people” as an ethnic unit or group—and not on the individual as an entity with a life apart from it.76 J. S. Sharp has argued that Afrikaner studies of culture hinged on the concept of ethnos, which was originally applied by the German ethnologist Wilhelm Mühlmann, and meant that each human society was a closed, ‹xed world unto itself, with its own laws, customs, and unique properties. The mixing of “nations” would therefore have disastrous consequences.77 Afrikaner concepts of volk and its mystical status were, furthermore, very similar to those of the early nineteenth-century German romantics, who believed that the German people were intrinsically bound to the land on which they lived, and that they had a speci‹c national Geist unique to them, and to them alone.78 German scientists like Westermann, Luschan, and Meinhof also visited South Africa themselves, holding lectures and reporting on their experiences once back in Germany. Westermann went to South Africa in the early 1930s and ended up dedicating his book The African Today and Tomorrow to the University of the Witwatersrand. Luschan had traveled to the country at the beginning of the twentieth century and while there reported on both his anthropological conclusions concerning the “Hottentots ” and Meinhof’s linguistic assessment of the same. Meinhof took his own trip in 1927–28.79 At the time, his presence was celebrated by South African peers such as Lestrade, who delivered the paper “A Great Africanist ” to herald Meinhof’s arrival in South Africa. Lestrade, who was born in Amsterdam but spent most of his life in South Africa, was the government ethnologist who established the ethnological section of the Department of Native Affairs in Pretoria in 1925.80 Although he never studied with Meinhof in Germany, he was among the linguist’s most steadfast supporters and even remarked that “the greatest advance in all Bantu philology was the advent of Carl Meinhof.”81 In “A Great Africanist,” Lestrade commented in a similar vein that he believed Meinhof’s visit might well prove portentous for South Africa and assist it in answering the “Native Question .” Lestrade considered Meinhof among the very few who were truly After the Colonial Moment 175 expert in “the mentality of the native” and saw him as an important guide in deciding how to govern and police Africans.82 He also dismissed as ridiculous the idea that Meinhof was a mere theoretician, not “competent to pronounce on (practical) problems,” and said that “practical men of all kinds” were “applying more and more to the students of primitive mentality ” for the information they needed to work successfully among Africans.83 Lestrade was not the only South African convinced of the importance of German theories to African studies. Meinhof’s lecture tour, which took him all over the country to both universities and other venues, was favorably reported in local newspapers such as the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail and Cape Town’s Cape Argus and Cape Times. Meinhof was so pleased with his positive welcome in the press that he held out hope that his visit would “contribute to a closer connection between German and South African science.”84 The media did seem to like him. According to a Mr. Renner of the German consulate in Pretoria, the Rand Daily Mail had reported that “in South Africa, Professor Meinhof has a virtually pioneering effect, and national scientists must follow his lead. In particular, his studies with regard to African songs, legends, and sayings are of the greatest importance , as they grant insight on the psyche of the natives.”85 Furthermore , on January 23, 1928, the Cape Times, which published articles about each of the several lectures that Meinhof gave at the University of Cape Town, praised the scholar for delving into the “fascinating realm of native myth, legend, and romance” with “authority and humour.”86 The Times also commented—as it had in other instances—that Meinhof...

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